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Jim Gilmore, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, made his way though the Valley today, stopping at a “high end retail apartment construction site in Harrisonburg” (from NBC29). It appears that the primary issue he’s hitting over and over again is drilling for oil off the Alaskan coast. Gilmore is touting Alaskan oil as the solution to high fuel prices in the U.S.

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Dave Miller, frequent hburgnews contributor/commenter, turns 27 today.  He’ll be downtown the rest of the evening.  Come celebrate and get together with fellow hburgnewsies!

The Washington Post reported that the McCain campaign is expected to start airing ads in the Harrisonburg area tomorrow.

Virginians have supported Republicans for president for more than three decades. But Democrats have won recent statewide races for governor and U.S. Senate, prompting many political watchers to say Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, may have a shot at winning Virginia.

The McCain campaign is reportedly also buying airtime in Norfolk, Richmond, Roanoke, Charlottesville and southwest Virginia. But why Harrisonburg?

Over the course of four hours Friday night, the Harrisonburg Police Department, in conjunction with the Rockingham County Sheriffs Office, conducted two separate safety check points in the city.

Shortly after 7 p.m., officers set up at Hawkins Street and Norwood Street, battling frequent rain. At 9 p.m., the operation moved to University Boulevard and Driver Drive, near the campus of James Madison University. Read more »

Earlier this week, the Times-Dispatch ran a story on a woman who is trying to keep Social Security numbers private by making the SS numbers of public officials, well… public. Today I noticed that some former Rockingham County officials were included on her list. Read more »

I don’t know how I missed this story yesterday (it was reported on WSVA). 12 protesters, including several JMU students, were arrested in Richmond Monday for blockading Dominion Power’s corporate headquarters in protest of their plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Southwest Virginia. Read more »

Last week, an article appeared in the Star City Harbinger in which Janice Lee Allen, an Independent candidate from Harrisonburg running for U.S. Congress, questioned where Democratic nominee Sam Rasoul’s loyalties lie.

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Today’s DNR reports that Heather Denman, Executive Director of the H’burg/Rockingham Boys & Girls Club, will be retiring September 30.

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There’s a story in today’s DNR about “deathanol,” the federal mandate, and the impact of corn-for-fuel on the local poultry industry. I recently read an interesting article about “the seven myths of energy independence” in Mother Jones that touched on some of the same points.

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Harrisonburg’s representative in Congress, Bob Goodlatte, questioned former White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on McClellan’s recent book (a tell-all about how the Bush Administration deceived the American public before and after the invasion of Iraq). Goodlatte asked McClellan how many TV shows he has been on as a result of the book, and concluded that there was no “enlightening information to be gained from [McClellan's] testimony.”

Just because the “Enron Loophole” has been closed doesn’t mean it’s out of the news (as evidenced by Keith Olbermann’s recent story on it). AFP blogger Chris Graham “found some ties [between Rep. Bob Goodlatte's contributors, and the lobbyists that fought to keep the loophole open] that might be of interest to voters in the Sixth District.”

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In 2002, before MySpace and Facebook were household names, Ronnie Rodes had an idea for a social networking site in Houston that was geared more toward families and homeowners than high school or college students. But he didn’t have the resources to execute a social networking site at the time.

Six years later, with the help of Google and a local PR/communications company, NeighborhoodFriends.com is ready to launch from Harrisonburg Read more »

I talked to several people about the decision to eliminate Free Clinic services for undocumented patients. Here are some of the responses:

Sandy Hodge, Free Clinic Board President: “It was a very difficult decision. We discussed it for a good six months and felt like in order to be able to continue to grow with the free clinic we were going to have to make this decision, but it wasn’t one that had complete support of the board. We really had just started asking for Social Security numbers at the beginning of June. We only do that when people come in for eligibility and we renew the eligibility every six months. There are a lot of mixed feelings on this.” Read more »

At its May board meeting, the Harrisonburg Rockingham Free Clinic decided to cut off services to patients without legal status (confirmed through either a Social Security number or other documentation of legal residency), effective July 1. About 100 current patients, representing about 10% of the clinic’s case load, will be effected affected by the change. Read more »